The Illusion of Pressure: Why Perspective Matters More

A note to young leaders.

A university friend of mine lost her mother in a car crash during her final year of high school. What she said to me then has stayed with me decades later:

“When something like that happens to you, and others start sharing their worries, you can’t help but think: If only you knew, your problem isn’t that big.”

The human mind is hardwired to look for danger. And what you constantly look for, you tend to find.

But that’s not the issue. The issue is that the mind has no absolute scale with which to assess the danger it finds. It uses instead a relative scale, based on what you’ve recently experienced.

Be like José Mourinho – the Portuguese Premier League football manager – who regularly rebuffed journalists when they asked him if he was under pressure:

“Pressure? What pressure? Pressure is millions of people around the world having no money to feed their children. That’s pressure. There’s no pressure in football.”

So if you’re feeling under a lot of pressure, you’re likely living in a bubble.

Prick the bubble and the pressure disappears.